


Pass Da Mic, Pass Da Pen

by astrangerenters



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Friendship, Getting Together, Humor, Librarians, Libraries, M/M, Sexual Content, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:31:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7387060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters/pseuds/astrangerenters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jun’s friend Aiba drags him to an “open mic” night for his creative writing club. The talent on display may not be the greatest, but does it matter when the guy running the club is just Jun’s type?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A former colleague of mine writes original fiction in his spare time, and I recently attended an open mic event to hear him and others read. Needless to say it was inspirational and the stories there were much better than the ones here bahaha.

Hands pressed down firmly on his shoulders and he jolted, letting out a yelp of surprise and spinning in his chair, batting his hands angrily at whoever had surprised him.

“Whoa, whoa, Matsujun, whoa!”

He shuddered at the phantom feeling on his shoulders, turning to find Aiba-kun had come down to meet him a few minutes early. He scowled at his friend, gripping the arms of his chair tightly to keep from smacking him. “Don’t…don’t do that!” he snapped, “don’t sneak up on me!”

Aiba stood back, leaning against Jun’s cubicle wall with his messenger bag slung across his body. “Sorry!” He didn’t sound sorry. “Ready to go?”

Jun turned back, seeing the clock on his computer said 6:52 PM. He’d spent the entire day trying to think of an appropriate excuse, some reason not to go, and he’d failed. It hadn’t helped that there’d been a last minute conference call with the Osaka office at 4:30, which he’d had to give his full, undivided attention…instead of coming up with a reason to tell Aiba he couldn’t make it.

For the last several months, Aiba had been desperate for someone to go with him, someone from the office anyway. “I need unbiased ears,” Aiba always claimed. 

By day Aiba Masaki was no different from Matsumoto Jun, both of them corporate drones in cubicles from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM (on a good day). Aiba was in sales, Jun was in finance.

But by night (and by weekend, presumably), Aiba liked to write. He didn’t have ambitions of getting anything published seriously, but writing fiction, writing short stories was a hobby he’d been into the last few years. An ex-girlfriend of his had gotten him hooked and even after the break-up, Aiba had kept up with it. He complained to Jun about his stories all the time, that he was stuck on an idea or if he ought to include a ghost or not. Jun…Jun didn’t really get it, writing for fun instead of as a way to make a living. He’d read one or two of Aiba’s stories before, and they’d been okay, but if they were on sale in a bookstore, he’d probably pass them by. But Jun didn’t read a lot, period, aside from manga here and there. Aiba didn’t hold it against him.

But Aiba did want Jun to come to his writing club and had been asking him to non-stop for months. They met in a cafe not far from Sugamo Station, a few stops away from their office. While the writing club met every other Saturday morning, the members sharing their works in progress and helping each other with plots and ideas, on the last Thursday of every month they met up for a reading. An open mic session where members could read excerpts from their works out loud.

“Some of them are really good, Matsujun,” Aiba was always saying. “My stuff’s alright, but some of them are just so good!”

And so after months and months of poking and prodding, Jun had finally agreed to attend the open mic night. Aiba had assured him repeatedly that Jun didn’t have to come with anything of his own to read, that it was a voluntary thing, and that plenty of people came who weren’t writers. Family, friends, partners. “It’s all about support,” Aiba had told him, “it’s hard, standing up there. But you won’t be bored, all the stories are great!”

Then again, the people in the writing club were his _friends_. And Aiba was the sweetest, least judgmental person Jun knew. Of course he’d say complimentary things about them. Jun hoped nobody would ask him for his opinion on their stories, especially if they sucked. Jun sometimes spoke without thinking, and he didn’t want to cause any trouble for Aiba. 

Tonight’s open mic session started at 8:00, and Aiba had mostly sold him on going because the cafe stayed open while the readings went on. Jun could at least content himself with some coffee and a treat while he sat through all the amateur poems and stories. He promised Aiba that he’d at least stay through his own reading, and Aiba had only smiled.

Jun shut off his computer, trying to put on a neutral expression as he stood up and met Aiba’s hopeful gaze. “Alright, let’s get going.”

—

Cafe Gosuke really didn’t stand out on the street. There were restaurants and izakayas all around, the laughter and chatter of happy people getting off of work and enjoying their evening richocheting up and down the block. Jun followed a bit nervously as Aiba tugged open the door to the small cafe, the glass door embossed with a large ‘G’.

There was quiet jazz music playing over the speakers, and the cafe enveloped him in warmth as soon as he and Aiba crossed the threshold. As the strong, comforting aroma of coffee lured him in, Jun took a look around.

There was a counter and bar to place coffee orders, a few half-empty bakery cases showcasing a variety of cupcakes, cake slices, fruit tarts, and savory stuffed breads. There were dark hardwood floors throughout, and the lighting was dim but soft, welcoming. A good change from the harsh fluorescent lights in their office. The furniture had a lived-in feeling, all of it mismatched. Not in that intentionally trendy sort of way, thankfully, but just comfortable. There were round wooden tables surrounded by blue and green-painted wooden chairs. There were a few sofas along the shopfront wall, cozy looking and just as eclectic. 

Half of the tables and sofas were occupied already, people of all ages having come to Cafe Gosuke for open mic night. Some people sat alone with a laptop or a notebook, fiercely scribbling down their thoughts or rehearsing quietly. Others sat in groups, talking animatedly and munching on treats from the bakery case.

All the tables and chairs were arranged in a horseshoe, turned in the direction of a small raised platform at the opposite end of the cafe with a solitary microphone. The wall behind it was dark brick, covered in sketches. Even from a distance they were as Aiba had described them, portraits of various people with large, exaggerated heads and faces on smaller bodies. Cafe Gosuke’s owner had drawn all of them himself. Some were celebrities, some were regular patrons that he’d sketched from memory.

The whole place was very relaxed, and Jun could see why Aiba felt comfortable here. Aiba tugged him by the sleeve of his suit jacket, pulling him over to the cash register where a young man with a bright smile greeted them. “Hey Aiba-kun!” the man said, holding a hand out. Aiba shook it happily. “Got something good tonight?”

“I always bring my best stuff here,” Aiba teased before turning to introduce Jun. “Matsujun, this is Kotaki-kun.”

Jun was surprised. “Aren’t you a little young to own a cafe?” This tall kid had drawn all those things on the wall?

Kotaki laughed merrily. “No, no, I’m not the boss, but thank you very much for thinking so. Maybe I should ask for a raise.”

The door to the kitchen swung open, bringing with it the alluring scent of something sugary sweet. A smaller man with a round, relaxed face emerged, a soft smile on his lips as he saw Aiba. “No raises, there will be no talk of raises when we have customers,” the man chided, walking up to the cash register and lightly shoving Kotaki aside. “Aiba-kun, welcome.”

“Here’s the artist,” Aiba teased. “This is Ohno Satoshi, he owns this cafe. Ohno-san, this is Matsumoto Jun from my office.”

Jun was a little embarrassed. Of course the kid wasn’t the owner, what a dumb thing to say. He nodded politely. “Aiba-san raves about your curry pan.”

Ohno beamed at the compliment. “If there’s one thing I get right, it’s my curry pan.”

“Aiba-shi!” came a hollered voice, breaking the calm jazzy ambiance of the cafe. Jun turned just as Aiba did, seeing a slim man curled up on one of the sofas, the glow of his laptop screen giving him an almost wicked appearance. “Aiba-shi, finally! Get over here and read this!”

“Hey Nino!” Aiba pulled out his wallet, slapping down his credit card on the counter. He patted Jun on the shoulder. “Ohno-san knows what I want, so feel free to order whatever you like. It’s on me tonight!”

“Aiba-kun…” Jun protested weakly, his friend leaving him alone at the coffee counter as he headed over to greet his other friend. He turned back to Ohno-san and Kotaki-san, nodding. “I guess I’ll have a large black coffee and…curry pan.”

“Coming right up,” Kotaki said, hurrying off to prepare Jun’s order.

He awkwardly pushed Aiba’s credit card across the counter. “Thank you very much.”

Ohno took the card without saying anything. Aiba was a regular customer, so him running off and leaving his card behind probably wasn’t out of the ordinary. He turned, seeing that Aiba had sat down with his writing club friend, this Nino, on the sofa. Aiba was digging through his bag, pulling out the bright pink notebook he always wrote his stories in before typing them up. “It’s pink so I don’t lose it,” he always said, the pink eyesore usually sitting in his cubicle at work in case he had an idea he had to write down immediately.

Ohno processed the payment, sliding the card back. He gestured with his hand to one of the tables, on the left side of the horseshoe with two green chairs. “Aiba-kun usually sits there, if that helps. Kotaki-kun will bring your stuff over when it’s ready. Thanks for coming, I hope you have a good time.”

Jun thanked the cafe owner, taking Aiba’s card and heading for his usual table. He felt a little awkward, the table nestled between two other tables that were occupied with some enthusiastic writers. In front of him was a group of three middle-aged women, laughing over something in another’s notebook. Behind him was a married couple about Jun’s age, the husband with his arm resting on the back of his wife’s chair while she tapped away on an iPad. 

He was alone in this strange world of creative writers, waiting nervously for his coffee. Aiba seemed to be deep in conversation with his friend, but hopefully he’d come back before the actual open mic session got going. Kotaki brought over the freshly brewed coffee and the warmed up curry pan, giving Jun something else to do aside from feeling out of place. To Jun’s dismay, Kotaki brought Aiba’s coffee and a slice of chocolate cake directly to him on the sofa.

The curry pan, at least, was one of the best he’d ever tried. Even if he had no intention of joining the writing club that met at Cafe Gosuke, he’d have to find a way to come back and have another one of these. He turned around, seeing Ohno-san smiling knowingly in his direction. Jun offered him a thumbs up, which Ohno returned with a chuckle before moving to greet another customer who’d just come in the door.

“Excuse me, sorry to bother you.”

Jun turned around at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, finding a man standing in front of his table. He nearly choked on the massive bite of curry pan he still had in his mouth, looking up to meet a pair of large, friendly brown eyes. The guy had a real nerdy vibe to him, dressed in a thin brown button-down cardigan over a blue X Japan t-shirt. Jun suddenly felt overdressed in his suit from work, though Aiba was wearing one too.

He had dark hair that fell across his brow, a slightly chubby face, and a kind smile that made Jun glad he was sitting down because otherwise he’d be weak in the knees. The type of guy he swore he wouldn’t go for, not anymore. “Are you new?” The guy had a clipboard in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other. “Are you here for open mic night?”

Jun desperately chewed, swallowing. Did he have crumbs on his face? “I…no, no. I don’t write. I can’t write.”

The guy looked at him curiously before Jun’s brain caught up with his mouth. 

“I mean,” he said, shifting a little awkwardly in his seat. He pointed to the sofa. “I’m Aiba-kun’s friend.”

“Oh!” the guy said, smiling again and turning Jun’s brain back to mush. “Welcome! I’m Sakurai Sho, I’m the leader of the Gosuke Writers’ Club. Nice to meet you.”

“Matsumoto Jun. I work at Pelican Sports with Aiba-kun.”

Sakurai looked over at Aiba, shaking his head and laughing. “He left you all alone, huh?”

Jun nodded.

Sakurai leaned forward a little, and Jun pressed his back more firmly against the chair. Sakurai’s breath smelled a little like cinnamon, probably from one of the cinnamon rolls in the bakery case. “He can be a little difficult sometimes, right?”

Jun couldn’t help nodding. “He loves being part of the club here. He asked me to come listen.”

“Well, we’re very happy you’re here, Matsumoto-san. The more the merrier. We’ve got a lot of great readers tonight, so I hope you’ll have a good time.”

“Thanks.”

And with that, Sakurai offered another devastating smile before making his way over to the table behind Jun, greeting the husband and wife. “Keiko-san! Are we going to hear more about the bleeding house tonight?”

Jun tried to calm down, sipping his coffee, tapping his toe nervously. Aiba had always said nice things about his writing club, about the other members and his friends. But since Aiba was straight, he’d never had any reason to describe the leader of his little group as attractive. As handsome. As a direct pitch right into Jun’s strike zone.

Then again, Aiba, of course, knew that Jun was single and had been for a while now. Aiba, of course, knew that Jun had been trying to get back into the dating scene for months and had not had any luck. Aiba, of course, knew exactly what Jun’s last boyfriend had looked like.

He looked over to the sofa, scowling at his friend. This was a scam. Well, Aiba wasn’t much of a scam type. Perhaps it was a two birds, one stone sort of situation. 

Jun nervously sipped his coffee, unable to keep from listening in as Sakurai Sho made his way around the room, chatting with the other writers and jotting down people on his clipboard if they planned to read that night. Though there had to be at least twenty tables in the cafe, each of them slowly filling up with people, Sakurai knew everyone by name, and he knew most of them by what they were writing. He asked one elderly man about his poems, a mother and her daughter about their sci-fi novel’s progress. His voice was soothing, his laughter boisterous and enthusiastic. It was easy to see why Aiba got along so well with his writing group.

It was five minutes to 8:00 when Sakurai hopped up on the platform, still holding his clipboard. He approached the microphone and waved. “Looks like we’ve got a great crowd here at Cafe Gosuke tonight!” He waited while several of the tables clapped. “We’ll get started in a few more minutes, so now is the time to go order something from Satoshi-kun. It’s going to be a great night! Let’s all have fun!”

Jun watched as Sakurai left the platform, heading for the sofa where Aiba and his friend were still comparing notes. Sakurai patted Aiba on the shoulder, pointing across the cafe to where Jun was sitting alone. He looked away quickly, hearing Aiba’s noisy laugh in reply to whatever Sakurai said. Whatever was said worked though, Aiba packing up his bag, his coffee mug, and his cake plate, hurrying over to the table.

Ohno-san was already waiting with a clean fork when Aiba arrived, his fork having dropped to the cafe floor in his haste to hurry over.

“Sorry, sorry!” Aiba said, collapsing into the chair next to Jun and accepting the fork with a quick thank you. “Nino wanted to know what I thought of the last chapter he sent me. I didn’t even realize I’d left you for so long! Sorry!”

“It’s alright,” Jun lied, desperately trying to focus on drinking his coffee like a normal human while being in the same room as someone who attracted his attention like Sakurai Sho.

Aiba pulled out his pink notebook, hurriedly flipping through pages to find his spot. “Sho-chan said you seemed lonely, I’m sorry!”

He looked over, suddenly realizing that Sakurai had been watching him in return. Sakurai hurriedly looked away, looking back at something on Nino’s laptop screen. Maybe it was the low lighting in the cafe, but had Sakurai just blushed?

It was going to be a long night.

—

“Hello again!” Sakurai Sho said a short time later, standing at the microphone once more. The jazz music had been turned off, and the room was quieter. “I’m happy to see all these familiar faces. But for those who might be new, let me go ahead and introduce myself.”

Sakurai looked briefly in the direction of Aiba and Jun’s table before looking straight ahead again. Jun felt Aiba step on his foot, and he now had confirmation that Aiba was plotting something more than just the storyline of his own fiction.

“My name is Sakurai Sho, and I’m a librarian at the Komagome Library. For five years now, the Gosuke Writers’ Club has met here on a monthly basis as a way to share our work with each other. It doesn’t matter what you write. Poetry, mysteries, plays…our club is all about supporting each other, helping one another to become better writers. And for many, reading their work out loud can be helpful. Hearing your dialogue, hearing your characters’ voices, hearing an audience react. It’s incredibly valuable.”

Sakurai kept speaking, but Jun was stuck on the guy being a _librarian_. Aiba was still rudely stepping on his foot, almost as though he feared Jun would run away. His last boyfriend had been a professor at Waseda, and Jun had spent far too many dates meeting him at the university library before heading for a meal. Aiba was practically vibrating beside him, almost as if to say “You like nerdy guys? I’ve got you another nerdy guy.”

His mood darkened, and Jun tried to keep from frowning. This was a bit too much. Did poor Sakurai-san even know what was going on here?

“Without further adieu,” Sakurai said, “our first reader for the night will be Haru-san, who will be sharing a comedic scene from her new novel. I’ve been told it’s now available on Amazon…”

“Next week!” a female voice cut through the crowd. “Not until next week.”

Sakurai leaned forward, his voice deepening humorously as he spoke into the microphone. “Soon to be available on Amazon then, please welcome Haru-san.”

The crowd applauded as a young woman got to her feet, opening a leather-bound notebook and moving onto the platform. Sakurai stepped back, having a seat on the arm of one of the sofas, clapping more enthusiastically than anyone else.

Jun tried not to think about Aiba’s trying-too-hard matchmaking, instead listening to Haru-san’s story. Every participant was given about ten minutes to read, and Haru’s story was about a young couple working in a hotel, trying to solve the problems of their guests. It wasn’t the type of novel Jun would read but it wasn’t so bad.

Sakurai continued to introduce each reader with warmth and genuine affection, standing in front of the microphone with encouraging smiles. Nobody seemed all that nervous coming up to speak, and Jun supposed that Sakurai-san’s enthusiasm went a long way to making people feel comfortable on stage.

His support never wavered, even though Jun thought many of the writers were sub-par. Jun spent more time staring at the rim of his coffee mug than listening to an elderly man read a strange poem about cockroaches. He had to remember to clap when the mother and daughter team read through an incomprehensible chapter of their science fiction novel, some odd story about lizard people traveling back in time to fight for Oda Nobunaga.

Keiko-san, the young wife sitting at the table behind them, was very pretty, had an almost elegant beauty. But then she held up her iPad to read from a chapter of her novel about a haunted house, describing one of the ghouls that roamed the house with grim and gory details. Jun’s curry pan was on the verge of coming back up as the pretty woman read about bloody, goopy pus shooting out of the ghoul’s eyeballs and into someone’s mouth with matter-of-fact indifference. But the room erupted into cheers when she was finished, her husband the loudest of all. Jun wondered what was wrong with these people.

Sakurai got back to the microphone. “Thank you, Keiko-san! Some brutal stuff! We can’t wait to hear what happens next.” Sakurai looked a little green, but he was still pretty cheerful. “On that note, we’re at tonight’s halfway mark. If Keiko-san’s story hasn’t messed with your appetite, Satoshi-kun’s still got plenty of treats and coffee left for you to buy. We’ll take a fifteen minute break. Thanks!”

People started shuffling around, several of the writers getting out of their seats to go over and praise the works of those who had already read. Even the old man with the boring cockroach poem had at least three fans gathered around. Aiba’s hand brushed against Jun’s arm. “So what do you think? Good stuff, huh?”

Jun swallowed, wondering if it was better to lie or tell the truth. He decided to do neither. “I’ve still got your credit card,” he said plainly.

“Oh!” Aiba said, Jun handing it back to him. “I completely forgot.”

Before Jun could chide his friend for his absent-mindedness, he could see Sakurai-san approaching the table with that clipboard again. Jun got to his feet, nearly knocking his chair over. “I need a refill on coffee.”

“Wait, I’ll pay,” Aiba said, but Jun waved him off, hurrying away before he made a fool of himself in front of Sakurai Sho.

While Jun had found some of the stories average and most of them far below that, Sakurai Sho had worn a smile while each person had read. If the story hadn’t interested him, Jun had found himself glancing across the cafe to the librarian, watching the way he watched the readers. Did he honestly think the stories were good? Or was he just a nice guy, unlike Jun with his inability to stifle his cynicism?

He pulled out his wallet, about to ask Ohno-san for another coffee when he heard Sakurai’s voice. “Hey, it’s on me.”

A shudder shot down his spine, nearly freezing him in place. Apparently Sakurai hadn’t been coming by to speak with Aiba. “Black…just black coffee,” Jun mumbled, embarrassed. “Thank you.”

“Two black coffees, Satoshi-kun.” Sakurai stood beside him at the counter, paying in cash. “You know, Aiba-kun says he’s been trying to get you to come for a long time.”

“He has?” Jun was going to kill him.

“What made you change your mind?” Sakurai leaned a bit closer so nobody could hear him. “You can be honest, I know Aiba-kun is…persistent.”

Jun allowed himself a small grin. “Persistence pays off. I’ve read a few of his stories before, I figured it was rude to keep turning him down.”

“He’s a good storyteller,” Sakurai said. When Kotaki-san handed over two mugs, they both turned around, taking in the room. Jun wasn’t surprised to see that Aiba had left their table again, was speaking with Keiko-san and her husband enthusiastically about her nasty, freaky story.

“Guess I’ll find out.”

“Having a good time?”

He’d spent half the time being unimpressed with the stories and the rest of the time staring Sakurai down, wondering if Aiba had said something to the guy about Jun’s single and looking status.

Sakurai sipped his coffee, offering a sly smile. “You can be honest about that, too. I can keep a secret.”

Jun felt his face growing hot. He didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. It wasn’t like he could write anything himself. And he definitely didn’t have the courage to get up in front of strangers and read something as personal as a poem or a story. “It’s…everyone’s got very different stories.”

“They do.”

Before he could say anything awkward, in case some of the writers were Sakurai’s close friends, he changed tactics. “What about you, Sakurai-san? Do you write?”

“Me?” His laughter was warm, gentle. “No, no, I don’t. I’ve tried before, but I think I’m much better at reading than writing.”

“Spoken like a true librarian.”

Sakurai laughed again. “I guess that’s true. I studied literature in university, and I didn’t think I had the guts to come up with anything better.” He looked over, grinning. “But I do like helping people out who _do_ have those kind of guts. It’s a lot of fun, running the group here. Offering help, suggestions, editing, I’m better at that stuff.”

Before Jun could ask him anything else, one of the writers approached him, notebook in hand. “Sho-san, can you come look at this?” the young man said, “I’m trying to decide what the best stopping point is.”

“Of course.” Before Sakurai could apologize, Jun waved him off. He nodded. “Hope you’ll enjoy the second half, talk to you later.”

—

It was nearly 10:00 PM when Sakurai announced that it was Aiba’s turn to read. Jun had a sneaking suspicion that Aiba had deliberately asked to read later in the evening, if only so Jun had to stay the whole time and couldn’t escape.

The second half had been rougher than the first. 

There’d been the college student’s chapter that was a thinly veiled ripoff of some Higashino Keigo thriller. The woman who’d written an angry poem about her ex-husband. A man’s depressing story about his grandfather with Alzheimer’s. Two different stories about vampire and human romances. The older housewife who’d needed Sakurai to move the microphone down and had kept losing her place, patting her head and musing “ah, where was I?” for nearly fifteen minutes. From the gentle look on Sakurai’s face, he didn’t have the heart to tell her time was up.

And then there’d been the middle-aged woman reading a scene from her romance novel, the entire cafe a bit stunned and amazed that the woman stood up in front of everyone to describe how “Kentaro-san thrust his erection into Mika’s quivering love slit, gouging and penetrating, his boulder-hard penis plunging into her slippery wet cavern with devastating abandon.” 

Jun was going to have more nightmares about Mika’s “quivering love slit” than any of the images Keiko-san had described in her frightening story.

Aiba got to his feet with a triumphant pump of his fist, walking up to the microphone with his pink notebook in tow. His voice was clear and confident when he started to read, and after suffering through so many odd writing choices, Jun at least felt comfortable hearing one of Aiba’s stories, a funny if exaggerated short story about a baseball player joining a cult dedicated to a mysterious “God of Home Runs.”

Looking around the room as Aiba read, he could see people perking up a bit in their chairs, smiling at Aiba, laughing where appropriate, encouraging him. In that moment, Jun felt guilty, having judged the other participants so harshly. No matter the story, no matter how well or how poorly it had been written, everyone had clapped and celebrated, supporting their club members. Maybe they all knew they didn’t have the real talent to get published. But it was rather nice to see everyone come together and cheer without cynicism, without malice.

Aiba was beaming from ear to ear when he stepped down from the platform to the sound of applause. Jun, a little ashamed of himself, clapped just as much as everyone else. Aiba had a lot of courage, going up there, reading and sharing so much of himself. He was proud of his friend, happy for him. 

Aiba set the pink notebook down on their table, still smiling. “Ah, so what did you think, Matsujun?”

“You did very well,” he said truthfully. He’d made no mentions of quivering love slits either, which earned him Jun’s gratitude.

“I’m glad you think so,” Aiba said. “Thanks for staying so long, it means a lot to me.”

“We’ve only got one left,” Sakurai announced, drawing everyone’s attention back to the platform. “Presenting another sure-to-be exciting and action-packed excerpt from his forthcoming fantasy series, tentatively titled _The Hope in the Darkness_ , here’s Ninomiya Kazunari with more to share about Yamashiro and Kiyo-chan!”

Aiba’s friend Nino, sloppily dressed in an old white t-shirt and sweatpants, headed to the stage with a computer printout. Where Jun expected to spend most of the reading sneaking glances across the cafe to Sakurai Sho and his smiling face, he couldn’t help paying attention once Ninomiya started to read.

As the minutes passed, Jun realized he had no clue what was going on. Yamashiro, a young man with a mystical sword, was heading for a place called the “Eternal Capital.” It seemed that Yamashiro was traveling with a companion named Kiyo, whom he had rescued from a slave existence in a salt mine. Even if the world Ninomiya had created seemed rather complex, his story littered with jargon and place names Jun didn’t know, the guy had a real knack for delivery.

He had voices for each character, a serious tone for the warrior Yamashiro, a gentle and feminine lilt for Kiyo, who Jun discovered over the course of the reading was something called an ‘Usagi-kin.’ Jun was a bit thrown by that, but when Ninomiya went on at length about Kiyo’s furry ears, he realized that Kiyo was some sort of oversexualized bunny girl. Not the kind of story Jun liked at all, but Ninomiya was so entertaining that he could only hide a smile behind his hand at an unnecessary description of Kiyo’s lithe body and her obvious lust for the warrior who’d saved her from slavery.

Jun applauded genuinely when Ninomiya finished his reading, the man instantly reverting back to his quiet, shuffling walk, merely offering a dismissive wave and a nod as he slunk off the platform, heading back to his laptop.

Sakurai headed to the microphone one last time. “Let’s give another round of applause for all our participants.” When that was complete, he spoke again. “I look forward to seeing any writers here on Saturday. The next open mic night will be a month from today. As always, we meet the last Thursday of the month with an 8:00 start time. Thanks again everyone, and please get home safely!”

With one final round of applause, the cafe’s occupants started to gather their things, a few still chatting with each other about stories, the women at the table in front of them making plans to meet for lunch after Saturday’s writing session. Aiba seemed to be moving slow deliberately, Jun itching to go home. He was definitely not surprised when Sakurai Sho made his way over.

Jun stood by politely as Sakurai shook Aiba’s hand, praising his story. Finally Sakurai turned to him, grinning. “And what about you, Matsumoto-san? Has Aiba-kun shown you this one before?”

“Nope, this was a new story.” He jostled Aiba’s shoulder. “It was good.”

“I keep telling him to submit to this short story contest, but he never believes me when I tell him his stuff is good.” When Aiba looked down, laughing in embarrassment, Sakurai looked Jun in the eye. “Will you please try and encourage him, Matsumoto-san?”

At that moment, he’d do anything the guy said. “Sure, I’ll try.”

“That’s the spirit. Those contests have monetary rewards too, why not go for it, I say. You’re good, you’re honestly good!”

“Ah, Sho-chan, shut up,” Aiba grumbled, even though Jun could just feel the happiness radiating from him. “…I’ll see you Saturday morning.”

Sakurai laughed. “I look forward to it.” There was a bit of an awkward pause before Sakurai spoke again. “Will you come for next month’s reading, Matsumoto-san? You’ll get to hear the next chapter of some of these stories. Exclusively! We’d love to see you again.”

Jun paled, wishing he could say no. Even though he’d liked Aiba’s story and even though some of the others hadn’t been that bad, he worried about the negative vibes he was probably giving off. Couldn’t some of the authors tell that his applause wasn’t terribly sincere? But if he came right out and said “I decline,” he’d look like a jerk, wouldn’t he? 

And with the way Aiba was now looking between the two of them, stifling a smile as he adjusted the strap of his bag, Jun knew that he was trying to help him out at the same time. Even if the stories were crap, it meant that he’d get to see the nerdy librarian and his goofy smiles again. Jun hadn’t disliked that part of the evening, at least.

“If I’m free…I…I guess I can come again,” he admitted, not willing to commit fully.

He nearly melted at the smile on Sakurai’s face. “We…we’re always happy for a big audience here. Hope you can make it.”

When they were out of the cafe, halfway to the train, Jun punched Aiba in the arm, staggering him a little.

“Hey!” his friend protested, rubbing the now sore spot. “What the hell?”

“You think you’re clever, don’t you, Masaki?”

Aiba sighed. “Huh?”

“I saw what that was,” Jun stumbled out. “With the reading and the guy and the…the guy.”

Realization arrived, Aiba’s annoyed expression turning into an unapologetic smile. “I thought you were dissing my story. So you figured it out, huh? I mean, I honestly wanted you to come hear me read, don’t get me wrong but…well, you’ve been looking and looking and looking for a while so I thought I could help out.”

Jun loosened his tie, anxious to get home. “You should have said something. I don’t like surprises.”

“Sho-chan is really really nice,” Aiba claimed. “If I had to pick a guy, he’d be first on my list.”

“Is he even…” Jun lowered his voice. “I mean, is he even…”

“Looking for someone?”

“Looking for a _male_ someone,” he snapped in reply. It would be a real waste of time to sit through another open mic night only to discover that Sakurai Sho preferred women. Or was already seeing someone.

Aiba threw his arm around him, squeezing. “You have so little faith in me, Matsujun. He’s a lonely old library book waiting to be checked out.” Aiba deepened his voice. “Checked out by someone like you.”

Jun shoved Aiba off of him. “Disgusting.”

Aiba just laughed at him. “You liked him, don’t deny it. Plus, he asked me if it would be weird if he bought you a coffee.”

Jun nearly tripped, feeling his heart race a little. “Really?”

“I may have…mentioned you a few times before tonight. In the ‘talking you up’ sense, I mean.” Aiba wrapped an arm around him again. “I’m on Team Matsujun all the way, and I think I’ve managed to convert him. Don’t let my hard work go to waste now!”

They headed for the train station, Jun unable to stop thinking about the nerdy librarian and the way he looked when he smiled.

—

But Jun restrained himself this time. He managed to go the whole month without looking up Sakurai Sho. No Facebook stalking, no Twitter stalking. Aiba had even offered to give Jun Sakurai’s LINE ID so they could become friends, but he’d stayed strong.

Jun was usually the type of person who needed all the details. After second or third dates, even after first dates, he tended to go full on policeman, looking for something online that might indicate if he ought to stop pursuing a person. He’d found out one date was an ultra right wing sort who posted hateful things online with his own name. He’d found out another guy had a wife and kids. 

But sometimes this strategy backfired on him. He’d hurt people’s feelings by mentioning something he’d read about them on an online profile, trying to find common ground and instead coming across as a creep.

He was just at an age where he didn’t want surprises anymore. Where he didn’t want another heartbreak as bad as his last one.

With Sakurai Sho, however, Jun had managed to keep his prying tendencies at bay. Instead Aiba had been doing all the detective work. Being friends with the guy, Aiba could vouch for Sakurai’s personality. Friendly, outgoing, hardworking. Tempered with a few things that could be intimidating. 

He’d gone to Keio for university and as far as Aiba had sniffed out, the guy came from money. He was intelligent and well-read, one of the perks of his profession, and Jun had been heavily attracted to intellectual types before. But his relationship with the Waseda professor had largely fizzled out because he’d made Jun feel stupid. “Oh, you didn’t know that?” had been a repeated question in their relationship, and it had filled him with anxiety, lowered his self-esteem. He was still recovering from months and months of being told repeatedly that he was inferior. Hopeless. Ignorant. Shallow. Not worth the effort. 

It made dating and trust difficult for Jun.

“Sho-chan’s not a rocket scientist, Matsujun,” Aiba had teased him.

But you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to be condescending.

With Sakurai’s positives and potential negatives swirling around in his head, Jun followed Aiba back to Cafe Gosuke. This time when Aiba’s friend Nino called him over, Jun just let it happen. Ohno-san remembered him, pointing across the cafe. “Your table’s ready.”

When Jun sat down, he saw Sakurai doing his usual rounds with the clipboard, chatting and laughing with the other participants. Jun was a known quantity in the cafe now, and he received friendly nods from some of the other writers. But he didn’t quite know how Sakurai would act. Since Aiba had spent the last month singing Sakurai’s praises to him, Jun knew that his friend was probably doing the same to Sakurai. It wouldn’t be an Aiba Masaki strategy if he wasn’t working both sides to achieve victory.

Jun had just taken a bite of his curry pan when Sakurai came by. The guy had a waiter’s timing. This time, he had a seat at the table beside him, setting his clipboard down.

“You actually came.”

Jun made the guy wait for a reply, chewing and enjoying his curry pan before offering an answer. “You thought I wouldn’t?”

Sakurai drummed his fingers a bit nervously on the tabletop. “Thought we’d scared you off last time.”

Jun wasn’t sure if Sakurai was using “we” to mean the writing club…or himself. Jun gathered his courage. “You ever have the curry pan here? I’ll get you one, since you were nice enough to treat me last time.”

Sakurai looked at him, a soft smile on his full lips. “I’ve had one of everything around here. Satoshi-kun’s the reason I’ve gained a bit of weight the last few months.”

“That’s not an answer to my question,” he pressed. Aiba’s month-long encouragement sessions had helped him loosen up a bit.

Sakurai had to look away this time, his smile getting wider. “I would love a curry pan, thank you. I have to do my rounds but…well, Kotaki-kun knows the right timing. He’ll get it to me once the reading starts.”

“You got it.”

“Well. It’s good to see you again, Matsumoto-san.”

Likewise, he wanted to say, but the curry pan offer had already made him nervous enough. Sakurai got to his feet, moving on to the next table, and Jun headed for the register, placing an order and explaining about the special delivery. Ohno-san’s face offered no judgment, but when Jun was heading back to the table, he could see Aiba’s too obvious smile and thumbs up from the other side of the cafe.

The readings got underway as they had the previous month, Aiba eventually joining Jun at his table. The stories being read were even worse than they’d been the last time. Instead of cockroaches, the old man now offered a poetic tribute to mantises. A writer Jun didn’t recognize from the last session read for ten long minutes about his dislike for grapes. And of course, the morbid Keiko-san was back. This time one of the ghouls in the haunted house turned all of the food in the house rotten, and Keiko described the mounds of fat, squishy maggots covering it all with a lot of superfluous detail.

The halfway point in the evening arrived, and after all the maggot talk, there were noticeably fewer people heading for the bakery case. Aiba made up the world’s lamest excuse about having to go check his email on Nino’s computer even though he had a perfectly functioning iPhone. That left Jun alone once more and a chair empty for Sakurai Sho.

Jun had seen Kotaki-kun bring over a curry pan for Sakurai during one of the first readings, had watched the guy eat the thing with a reverence Jun thought ought to be saved for a shrine visit. Then again, the treats at Cafe Gosuke were pretty damn good. Sakurai inclined his head in thanks after sitting down.

“I’m glad I ate that curry pan earlier,” Sakurai admitted, chuckling.

Jun’s own stomach was twisted up from three minutes of maggot talk. “Agreed.”

“I’ve scheduled Aiba-kun to read first in the second half, in case you wanted to duck out early.”

He stilled, seeing the rather serious look in Sakurai’s face. “Duck out?”

“Matsumoto-san,” Sakurai said, his voice quiet so he wasn’t overheard in the noisy cafe. “You don’t have to force yourself.”

“I’m not…” He shut his mouth, stinging a little. Perhaps he’d done a poor job hiding his true feelings this time around. People had always told him that it was easy to see how he was feeling, that his facial expressions were a dead giveaway. Had he made any of the writers uncomfortable? His heart sank…not just because he’d probably been rude, but because Sakurai had apparently noticed. 

Jun had become so interested in watching Sakurai that he hadn’t watched himself.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry if I’ve…if I’ve offended…”

Sakurai leaned closer, his hand resting only a few inches from Jun’s own. “You haven’t offended anyone. Nobody’s said anything, nobody’s noticed. I just…I just had a feeling you weren’t enjoying yourself. That’s all I’m saying.”

He looked around quickly. None of the cafe’s patrons were paying them any attention, save for one. He could see Aiba watching them with laser focus from where he was sitting with his friend.

Jun looked back, apologetic. “Sakurai-san, some of these stories are really, really horrible. In my opinion, I mean. I can’t…I’ve never been good at hiding what I think.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s not,” he continued. “These people are doing their best. They’re all trying really hard.”

To Jun’s surprise, Sakurai chuckled. “You don’t have to like everything. Your poor opinion of their story doesn’t really matter. A stranger’s opinion isn’t going to stop them from writing. Every story has an audience. Every story will be liked by some and disliked by others. There are national bestsellers praised by everyone that I think are complete and utter shit. Published works, Matsumoto-san, prize winners, boring stuff they make kids read in school, and I’d rather see every copy loaded up in a rocket and shot off to the moon to cleanse the Earth of their shittiness.”

He looked over, saw Sakurai’s gentle smile.

“Don’t be ashamed of what you’re feeling. But don’t sit through something you hate. It’s bad for your health.” Sakurai shrugged. “Your mental health, anyway.”

“This is the only way I can see you,” he blurted out.

Sakurai froze, and Jun knew he’d screwed up. Too fast, he yelled at himself. Way too fast. Stupid, stupid, stupid! He’d spent maybe a cumulative total of 20 minutes talking to Sakurai Sho, but it just felt like more. It felt like more because every day he had Aiba telling him how great he was. How compatible, how personable, how perfect he was for Jun.

Finally Sakurai got to his feet, picking up his clipboard. Jun was mortified, staring at the table, filled with dread as Sakurai stood there beside him, stunned into silence. Aiba was going to be so disappointed. Aiba was never going to let him live this down.

He was surprised when he found a business card on the table before him a few moments later, Sakurai pushing it in front of his gaze with his fingers.

He felt Sakurai’s hand rest on his shoulder for barely an instant. “It’s not the only way.”

Sakurai walked away, leaving Jun with his work email address, his work phone number…and on the flip side of the card, his personal phone number and a message.

_Life’s too short to sit through bad mantis poems. Call me anytime. Sho_

Jun hurriedly shoved the card in his wallet, looking around Cafe Gosuke and feeling like he wanted to sink through the floor. When Aiba came by, he spoke in a nervous shudder.

“I have to go.”

“Go?” Aiba asked, resting a hand on the back of his chair. “Matsujun, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll miss your reading. I’m really sorry.”

“What happened?” Aiba leaned closer. “Did Sho-chan…did Sho-chan say something? I thought things were…I thought…”

“He gave me his phone number, Masaki.”

Aiba gasped a little, on the brink of a happiness meltdown. “Then why the hell are you leaving?”

He blinked. “I…I don’t know.”

Looking around the cafe, Sakurai had seemingly disappeared. Perhaps he’d run off to the bathroom, just as worked up as Jun was currently feeling.

“You’re not making any sense,” Aiba complained.

He didn’t want to get hurt again. He didn’t want to set expectations too high and see them crash. He didn’t want Sakurai Sho, who was handsome and funny and decent, to be some secret asshole, Aiba’s vouching for him notwithstanding. He didn’t want Sakurai Sho to think he was an idiot.

But more than that, he didn’t want to sit through two more hours of bad writing just to gawk at someone. It really _was_ bad for his health.

“Email me your story,” Jun said, getting to his feet, the sound of the chair scraping the hardwood just a bit too loud. “Email it to me, I swear I’ll read it.”

“Jun, wait,” Aiba said, grabbing him by the elbow. He lowered his voice. “What will Sho-chan think? What should I tell him?”

“Tell him…tell him I’m like a lot of the stories here.” When Aiba looked at him, utterly confused, Jun allowed himself a nervous smile. “I’m a work in progress.”


	2. Chapter 2

Two weeks later on his lunch break, Jun wandered his way inside the Komagome Library. After spending the last several days taking Sakurai Sho’s business card out and worrying it between his fingers, paralyzed and unable to dial the number, he felt it was a wiser course of action to go in person.

It was quiet, mostly older people sitting at the tables with newspapers. It had been years since Jun had been in a public library, but they never changed much, did they? He saw a young woman was scanning books for patrons at the desk, so he hung back, feeling a little creepy as he waited for her.

When he finally approached, she seemed a bit confused when he didn’t have any books in his hands to check out. “I was actually wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for one of the librarians here, Sakurai-san.”

She nodded. “This is the circulation desk. Sakurai-san is in our reference department.” She gestured to a staircase. “Please go down those steps. He works at the desk down there.”

He thanked the woman, gathering his courage and heading to the lower level. It was even quieter downstairs. There were lots of shelves down here, packed with encyclopedias and other reference materials, older magazines and newspapers. There were a handful of study carrels and other work tables. The reference desk was opposite the staircase, two computer stations both occupied. One by a woman who was probably in her mid-50’s, the other by Sakurai Sho.

Today’s Sakurai was peak geek, sitting at his workstation in a red sweater vest over a plain white dress shirt, a red and purple polka dot tie around his neck. He seemed deep in his work, the sound of his fingers on his keyboard the only real noise in the room. Jun felt guilty for interrupting him at work, but not as guilty as he’d felt running away from Cafe Gosuke without a word or a call since.

He approached the desk, and the woman looked up first. Jun had to stifle a laugh of astonishment when he recognized her. The woman before him was the same one from the writers’ club, the woman who wrote the really horrifying romance novels. There was no sign of the pervert within when she smiled at Jun, not recognizing him. “Can I help you today?”

“Actually,” he said, seeing Sho perk up instantly. “I was wondering if Sho-san could help me?”

“Matsumoto-san!” Sho said with a smile. “It’s good to see you. Isn’t this out of the way for you?”

“I’m on my lunch break.”

“What a coincidence. So am I…in five minutes. If that’s alright with you, Hara-san?”

The woman nodded. “I’ve been hearing your stomach growl for a while, Sho-kun. You’d better just go already.”

Sho nodded. “I’m finishing up an email, let me join you in just a moment.”

Jun perused one of the shelves for a while, running his fingers along the book spines. He’d found himself in a natural science section, most of the titles and topics a bit out of his comfort zone.

He soon heard a “psst”, and he looked through the shelf to the next aisle, seeing Sho’s friendly eyes. He smiled, meeting him at the end of the row.

“Sorry to bother you at work.”

“It’s not a bother at all, I’m glad to see you.” Sho gestured to the staircase. “Let me just clock out and we can go grab something to eat…” Sho paused, looking a bit nervous. “…you _do_ want to do that, right?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Good,” Sho said. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Once they were outside, Jun was able to ask. “Sakurai-san, your co-worker…”

Sho raised an eyebrow, grinning. “What about her?”

“She’s a writer, isn’t she?”

“Oh yes, a very committed one.” Sho leaned forward, even though nobody was liable to listen in and know what they were talking about. “I can’t count how many times she’s asked me for some synonyms for ‘erection’ that sound…sexy.”

Jun laughed at him, trying to ignore the way his skin prickled at how easily Sho had just said the word ‘erection’ in front of him. He shook it off, asking Sho to lead the way for lunch.

They headed a few blocks from the library. Though several neighborhood restaurants had lines of workers on lunch breaks going out the door, Sho directed him down an alleyway to a hole in the wall place that specialized in tonkatsu and where there was no wait at all.

Sho waved to the old couple running the restaurant, calling out that they’d both have “the special.”

“Trust me on this one,” Sho said cheerfully as they took seats at a table near the window.

Jun took off his ID lanyard from work, setting it on the chair beside him while Sho rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. The old woman brought some glasses of water to them, but otherwise left them alone.

He looked up, meeting Sho’s eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“Aiba-san said it wasn’t because you didn’t want to.”

Jun swallowed down a lump in his throat. Was there no end to Aiba’s meddling? “He’s very nosy.”

Sho smiled. “I know.”

“I’m still working on…everything right now,” he admitted. “Figuring some things out.”

“I understand.” 

He appreciated that Sho understood. Perhaps he’d had just as much trouble trying to find someone too, someone to trust, someone to be with, not that either of them felt the need to spell it out.

“I don’t like surprises. I don’t like being surprised. I don’t like people coming up behind me and touching me. I don’t like things like that.”

“Oh?” Sho looked rightfully confused.

“But I surprised you, showing up unannounced like this. You were in the middle of work and I just showed up. I’m sorry, Sho-san.”

“I guess I don’t hate surprises as much as you,” Sho said. “And besides, I’ve spent most of my morning working on a request for information. This is a nice break.”

“What kind of request?”

“A woman in Niigata emailed us looking for some news story. She lived in Toshima as a kid, and thinks that there was a write-up in one of the big daily papers about some math competition she won when she was in junior high school. She was looking to get a copy of the article, but all she had was a range of a few years and her name to give me as clues to start looking.”

“That’s what you do all day?”

Sho smiled. “Sometimes people ask me where the bathroom is.”

He smiled in return. “Did you find it? The article?”

“I did.” He pointed to his temple. “Just call me Sherlock Sakurai.”

They chatted a little more about work, Jun giving the world’s quickest overview of his role in the finance department. Instead of the kind of clues that Sherlock Sakurai dealt with, his job required mostly numbers. Tracking invoices and orders and similar boring things. Sho told him more about the library, his usual patrons who came to ask him strange questions. 

When their food arrived and he had his first bite, he looked up to see a smirk on Sho’s face. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

Jun nodded, chewing and hiding a laugh. “Yep.”

They ate, got to know each other a little better, at least as much as they could in half an hour. The fear and nerves that had defined the last two weeks…or more like the fear and nerves that had defined the last several months of Jun’s life, they fell away under the strength of Sho’s ready smile and the cheerful, adoring way he spoke about some of the people who came in to the library. It was the same way he spoke about the members of the Gosuke Writers’ Club.

After wishing so long to find someone, striking out at every turn date after date after date, it felt good sitting and talking to Sho, amused by how much he loved to eat, how much he loved to talk. He had a smudge of tonkatsu sauce on the corner of his mouth, and Jun wanted to tell him. Better yet, he wanted to grab a napkin and wipe it, but it was too soon for that. Sho eventually found it himself anyway.

He had to catch the train back to the office, and it was quicker to walk in the opposite direction. They stood outside the small shop, and he felt much more comfortable this time around. He hadn’t had to suffer through astonishingly freakish smutty writing or bloody haunted houses or one of Ninomiya’s interesting but confusing chapters of bunny girl breasts bouncing. Sho had been right - of course there’d been another way.

“Our writers’ club meets this Saturday,” Sho said before they parted. “Everyone usually clears out of the cafe by 11:00. Just in case you wanted to come and actually enjoy yourself.”

He laughed, adjusting his lanyard around his neck. “The cafe’s just a cafe then, huh?”

He lost the ability to speak when Sho’s hand reached out, fingers brushing against the buttons of his dress shirt. He looked down, seeing that Sho was just turning his ID badge around so it was facing forward.

“Let me know if you’ll come,” Sho said, snatching his hand back quickly, turning almost as red as his nerdy sweater vest. “I’ll have a curry pan waiting for you.”

“It’s a deal.”

—

Curry pan after the writers’ club became a ritual every other Saturday and then soon it just became every Saturday. After falling too hard and too fast for people that ended up disappointing Jun or breaking his heart or both, Sho seemed content to take things at what Jun feared might be a glacial pace. He wasn’t sure if Sho just sensed that about him or if Aiba in his need to meddle had said something, had told Sho that Jun needed time.

But their curry pan Saturdays in the cozy Cafe Gosuke, the two of them curled up comfortably on separate sofa cushions, became something Jun looked forward to every week. And the things he’d feared turned out to not be scary after all. Sho had Twitter but only to follow celebrities he liked. He didn’t have Facebook. He mostly used LINE to talk about TV shows and send cute stickers with his co-workers at the library. He was just a normal guy.

And for all Jun had worried about Sho being “too smart” for him, Sho never spoke down to him. One week Sho had even asked him if he knew anything about baseball history, as they’d gotten a few questions at work, people emailing them for information about baseball statistics that hadn’t been available on Wikipedia. Sho hadn’t really known much about where to look, and though Jun didn’t know for certain, he’d had a few ideas that Sho had been happy to learn. Jun’s fears about not being able to keep up, of Sho thinking he wasn’t an equal, had been unfounded. Sho wasn’t a genius, but he was someone who always liked to learn. Jun realized that those were separate things entirely.

The only negative so far that Jun could see was that Sho had picked up Aiba’s habit, calling him “Matsujun” and pretty much nothing else after a while. It was only a negative because it just meant that he’d have to wait longer to see if Sho would ever be able to just call him Jun. Not that he’d been calling Sho anything other than “Sho-san” or “Sho-kun” the last few weeks either.

It was yet another open mic night, and Aiba had headed out already with his pink notebook and an application form for the short story contest Sho had been pestering him to enter for so long now. He was planning to have Sho check it over and proofread his story for errors before he sent it in. 

Jun, on the other hand, would not be setting foot inside Cafe Gosuke that night because Sho had texted him that morning to tease him that the women with the lizard people novel were bringing a chapter of something new entirely - a novel about killer robots invading Osaka. “It’s up to a plucky takoyaki stand worker to save the day,” Sho had told him. “Come on, Matsujun, that’s amazing, you have to admit it.”

Amazing or no, he’d said thanks but no thanks.

He was staying late at the office, scanning some old records so they’d have digital backups. He was just packing up to leave around 9:00 when his phone vibrated with an incoming message from Aiba.

_Sho-chan is going to read something tonight. You should at least come by for that._

He stared at his phone screen in disbelief. Sho had never said anything about writing something original. In fact, Sho had told him a few times now that he really didn’t have the “writing bug” even after all this time mentoring the writers’ club. Why hadn’t he said something?

Curiosity piqued, Jun couldn’t help catching the train over, walking to Cafe Gosuke. He watched from outside for a moment, standing across the way and peeking through the glass. He could see that Ninomiya was doing another of his performances, the audience hooked on his every word. Jun smiled despite himself, hoping that one day Nino’s work might find even more fans.

He waited until Nino was finished before opening the door to stand in the rear of the cafe. Though he was fairly certain he’d entered with little fanfare, Aiba spotted him and hurried over while a young man read a story about the funny things his grandma often said.

“Matsujun,” Aiba whispered excitedly, wrapping an arm around him. “You’re just in time. He’s up next and he’s the last one, and it’s going to be nuts in here, I’m sure of it.”

Jun scanned the crowd nervously, finding an oblivious Sho sitting on one of the sofas, watching the current reader. But Jun definitely noticed that Sho wasn’t as relaxed as he usually was, his sneaker tapping the floor nervously.

“He didn’t tell me he wrote anything,” Jun murmured.

Aiba covered his mouth to keep from laughing, tugging Jun by his sleeve and pulling him into the men’s room, shutting the door so they could talk.

“Hara-san lost her voice,” Aiba explained. “She asked Sho-chan to read her stuff on her behalf. I can’t believe he agreed to it.”

“The one with the hotel?”

“No, that’s _Haru_ -san. Hara-san is the woman he works with.”

Jun’s jaw dropped. He was speechless.

“Exactly what I said, that’s why I texted you as soon as I found out.” Aiba elbowed him, grinning wickedly. “He’s gonna read something dirty, I just know it. Ahhh, poor Sho-chan.”

He was in disbelief, registering just what Aiba was saying. Sho still hadn’t been bitten by the writing bug. Instead Sakurai Sho, the beloved leader of the Gosuke Writers’ Club, was going to finish the evening off by reading filthy pornography.

Out loud.

In public.

Well, as public as Cafe Gosuke could be considered.

Jun fumbled for the door, barely able to keep it together as he and Aiba stumbled out into the hall, trying to keep their footsteps quiet as they returned to the cafe. Jun couldn’t help looking at Sho, understanding his tapping foot even more now. Jun didn’t know where Sho had found the courage to agree to something so preposterous, but it warmed Jun from head to toe, seeing how much Sho cared about his friends, his colleagues…his writers. The Sho who clapped for them all, the Sho who wanted Aiba to enter contests. The Sho who would now abandon his dignity just to help Hara-san’s words be heard.

Although couldn’t the woman have just waited another month to get better?

Mercifully the young man stopped blabbing about his grandma and as the audience clapped, Sho moved to the microphone with less than his usual pep. In his shaking hands were a few typewritten pages. He was a bit underdressed for such a…sensual performance, in a blue plaid button-down and jeans, but Jun could see Hara-san at one of the front tables, clapping eagerly for Sho since she couldn’t speak.

“And now for our last reading for tonight,” Sho said, voice quivering a little. “Hara-san has laryngitis and per doctor’s orders, she’s been put on vocal rest. But she wanted to get your feedback on a scene from her new novel _Bubble Economy, Bubbling Romance_ so your reader tonight is yours truly.”

Jun had to turn around in secondhand embarrassment, hearing Aiba snickering beside him as he looked away. He made eye contact with Ohno-san, who was standing behind his counter. Ohno pointed to the platform, lightly chiding him for turning away. With a title like _Bubble Economy, Bubbling Romance_ , Sho was going to need all the crowd support he could get.

He turned back, seeing Sho was rustling through the papers. “Ah,” he muttered into the microphone, “this is a bit…it’s a bit…unsafe for children’s ears, please keep that in mind, won’t you?” He looked over at Hara-san, turning red. “I’ll do my best, but I’ll never do it as well as Hara-san.”

“You can do it, Sho-san!” cheered one of the writers and soon the cafe was in a mild uproar, clapping for their longtime leader to finally give a reading himself.

Sho took a deep breath and got started. Jun crossed his arms, moving to lean against the bakery counter to keep from falling over from laughing. His whole body was shaking as Sho started reading, Aiba beside him in equal near-hysterics, hand over his mouth.

The first few minutes went smoothly, Sho’s voice low but calm as he described the story’s heroine, Kunie-san, who’d recently lost her virginity to the mysterious Yamamoto-san, a stock market trader. The text was littered with 1980’s references, even the names of specific songs playing in the hotel lobby as Kunie-san waited for her next tryst.

Sho turned to the next page, shifting his weight from foot to foot as the audience listened to him so eagerly. Hara-san’s writing was just as amateur as Jun remembered, although coming from Sho’s mouth, it seemed almost…decent. It didn’t help that Sho read a bit slowly, licking his lips as his mouth presumably went a bit dry from reading without stopping. Jun had a hard time looking away once Sho read that Yamamoto-san had arrived, a hotel key clutched in his “strong, manly fist.”

Already Jun could see the women at some of the tables leaning forward, eager to hear the filthy words pour from the handsome Sakurai Sho’s mouth. Jun couldn’t help admitting that he felt similarly, even if those filthy words were bound to be as far from sexy as could be. It was different, though. It was Sho, his voice rasping, deep, sending a rush of heat down Jun’s spine.

“She’d waited in the lobby for him for what might have been a minute or an hour,” Sho read, scratching a bit nervously at an itch on his leg. “And now…now that they were here in the room he’d paid for, the room devoted entirely to their sin, she was soaking wet, her panties clinging to…her…clinging to her throbbing sex, desperate to feel the hard, thick pulse of him inside after so many days apart.”

Sho cleared his throat, and Ninomiya on one of the sofas buried his face in the crook of his arm, his entire body shaking in laughter. 

“Yamamoto-san grabbed hold of her, fierce and wanton. ‘I’m going to make you come,’ he said as his hand descended lower and lower, squeezing her rump like it was a fresh melon. ‘You’re going to come again and again, baby, you’re gonna gush like a waterfall.’”

There was a slight squeak as Aiba’s body slid down the bakery case, landing on his ass as he collapsed in silent giggles. 

Jun, however, wasn’t too concerned with the words Sho was saying. He was more interested in the way Sho was saying them. And how he was saying them had the female contingent of the room at his complete and utter mercy.

Sho blinked before continuing onward. “And…Kunie moaned with reckless abandon when Yamamoto-san pulled out his wallet. ‘Real estate, baby, that’s where the money is.’ He shoved her roughly onto the bed, ripping her panties off and flinging them aside. Yamamoto-san…” Sho blinked again, scratching his leg again. “Yamamoto-san then slipped a 10,000 yen bill from his wallet and teased it against her skin. Soon Kunie was gasping, shuddering, breathless, aching when she felt the crisp bill rub against her…her hot, gaping hole…”

Aiba made a quiet little noise of astonishment beside him, but Jun couldn’t look away. Sho was on a roll.

“Again and again, Yamamoto rubbed the money he’d earned from the stock market against her empty, needy vaginal entrance. ‘This money is mine, baby. This pussy is mine, too.’ She watched as he took the drenched currency away from her dripping wet center, licking the bill with his tongue.”

“Oh wow!” exclaimed one of the older housewives in the crowd, getting Sho to finally crack an awkward smile. Jun was breathing more heavily, listening without shame to the rather strange sex scene pouring from Sho’s lips.

“She screamed, not caring what the other hotel guests might think once Yamamoto-san thrust his velvet steel into her. His immense love rod slammed inside her repeatedly, her nails scratching down his muscled back, claiming him as he claimed her body. It wasn’t so much a waterfall as an ocean wave in a storm slapping against a sandy beach when she climaxed.”

“Matsujun, help,” Aiba wheezed beside him, trying to tug on the leg of Jun’s slacks.

“Kunie screamed as she…as she gushed for him.” Sho took a deep breath, his voice a little lighter, a little breathier. “‘Yes, Yamamoto-san! Yes, Yamamoto-san! I want you to fill me, I want you to fill me up! Give me all of it, all of it, all of it!’ He came inside her like a shotgun blast, and Kunie screamed again, never ever ever wanting it to end.”

Sho stopped speaking, and the room was utterly silent save for Aiba’s barely muffled laughing beside him. 

Blushing red as a tomato, Sho lowered the papers in his hands. “Um, and that’s the scene.” The writers’ club erupted, applauding like crazy for Sho’s performance.

He cleared his throat, his voice higher, shakier than it had been while he was reading. “And that’s also a wrap for this month’s reading. Many thanks to Hara-san for…for that scene. We all hope you’ll feel better next time around, I’m sorry if I wasn’t quite up to snuff…”

From the murmurs among some of the women, Sho had been way more than “up to snuff.” As the applause died down and the writers all gathered around each other, Jun watched as a mob of older women, mostly Hara-san’s friends, crowded around him.

Aiba had finally staggered to his feet, his face nearly purple from the effort he’d expended to keep from laughing himself to death. He grabbed a napkin from one of the holders on the bakery counter, patting his face with it. “Oh my god, I can’t believe he read all that…oh Matsujun, I can’t believe he said that shit out loud!”

“He’s a good guy,” Jun said, not caring how obviously proud he sounded.

“If I can get through the rest of my life without referring to my own dick as a ‘love rod’ though…” Aiba mumbled, chuckling to himself. 

Ohno turned the lights in the cafe up just a bit, taking the focus away from the reading platform. Sho, stuck hearing the praises of the likely sex-deprived women, was desperately looking for someone who might save him. What Sho definitely didn’t expect, if the shock in his eyes was any indication, was to look across the cafe and see Jun standing there.

When one older and obviously turned on woman started patting his face, the others with her got just as bold, praising him, patting his arms and telling him he “ought to read audiobooks if he was going to sound that sexy!”

Jun recognized the cry for help in Sho’s eyes and moved across the cafe floor with purpose. The women stepped aside when Jun walked up, some of them overtly checking him out without shame.

“Sho-san,” he said loudly, “I’m submitting that story I told you about to the contest, and the deadline is midnight tonight. Can you help me?”

Seeing his way out, Sho eased back from his crowd of adoring, perverted fans. The sounds of disappointment they made were clearly and pointedly directed at Jun. “Ah, ladies, it’s been fun tonight huh? I hope to see most of you on Saturday, okay! Thanks for coming out!”

And then Sho was tugging him by his sleeve, eager to escape. “Of course I’ll help you, Matsumoto-san,” he said noisily, hoping to keep the others away. “Should we get a table?”

“Ah, unfortunately I left my flash drive in my car, let’s go get it…”

Sho looked unbearably grateful, grabbing his bag from one of the sofas and following Jun to the cafe exit, the both of them waving quick goodbyes to Aiba and Ohno.

Once they were outside and at least two blocks away, Sho stopped walking. He let out a quiet but irritated “aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!”, causing a few couples nearby to steer clear. Having stopped in front of a recycling bin, Sho tore up the pages from Hara-san and shoved them inside like they might have given him a sexually-transmitted infection through the paper.

He turned to Jun, on the brink of one of his good-natured chuckles, until he realized that Jun was far from laughing.

“Matsujun?” Sho asked, sounding downright innocent after the ten minutes of filth he’d just read to the patrons of Cafe Gosuke.

Jun took a step forward, and Sho bumped into the recycling bin, making the tiniest squeak of surprise. Jun was holding onto every last ounce of self-control remaining to him. “Sho-san.”

“Yeah?”

“I kind of need to kiss you right now, really badly.”

Sho’s eyes widened, and he looked desperately from side to side, examining their surroundings. “Um…okay. Okay. Okay that’s…that’s not what I…okay.” 

He kept looking and Jun looked too, unable to hide his desperate need. Well, at least he wasn’t screaming or bursting or _gushing_ like Kunie. Across the way, a 7-11. Behind them, a family restaurant. He didn’t like the idea of kissing Sho for the first time in the men’s restroom of either establishment, and most other stores in the neighborhood were closed. But where could they find a little privacy?

Sho tapped his fingers against his mouth, panicking, until realization dawned on him. “Can you um…you said you need to kiss me now, but could you wait 15 minutes?”

Jun, regaining a bit of the sense he thought he had, managed to nod. Sho tugged on the sleeve of his jacket, unable to take his hand in a public street. 

“This way…it’s, just come this way.”

—

Jun was barely keeping it together. From the moment Sho had started to read that nasty scene, Jun had wanted him. Okay, maybe he’d wanted to kiss Sho for a while now…maybe he’d wanted to do even more than that. But hearing Sho read like that, hearing Sho _sound_ like that…well, it had moved up Jun’s timetable.

He found himself grinning as he figured out where Sho was taking him. Sho pulled out a swipe card from the pocket of his bag and approached the employee entrance door. The place had been closed for a few hours, but Sho explained that there was no security guard. It was just locked, although he could swipe in if he needed to after hours.

“Aren’t there cameras?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t work here.”

“If they check the tape, you’re a patron who left your wallet in one of the study carrels. You knew Hara-san and I were going to Cafe Gosuke, so you approached me.”

“This is kind of absurd.”

He inhaled sharply when Sho gave him a rather wicked smile. 

“It’s the only plan that I could come up with that didn’t involve us getting on the subway and going to my place. My place that’s like, half an hour away. You’re the one who wants to kiss me so badly, so I didn’t want you to suffer much longer.”

Sho swiped in, and they entered the darkened library. To give their story the legitimacy it needed, Sho turned on lights in each room they passed through, heading down to the reference section on the lower level. Since the camera didn’t pick up sound and nobody else was in the building, Sho explained what to do.

“Just poke around in each carrel, and then pretend you’ve found it. Hold it up and I’ll celebrate with you. Then we’ll shut the lights off and leave…later. It only tracks me swiping in, and once the lights are off, they’ll assume we left.”

“Sho-san, I didn’t realize librarians were such…rule breakers.”

Sho laughed quietly as Jun started making a big show of checking each study carrel. “Well, I’ve wanted you to kiss me since the first time we met. I think it’s worth it.”

He looked up from one of the carrels, seeing a slight mix of embarrassment and eagerness in Sho’s face. Since they’d met? Sho had wanted this since they’d met? Well, he couldn’t let him down, could he?

With the high wall of the carrel, there was no way the security camera would see his hand pull his wallet out of his pocket. He raised his hand up, waving the wallet almost theatrically.

“Found it! I guess you’d better escort me out then, Sakurai-san.”

Sho led him back upstairs, shutting all the lights off. Once they were off, the security cameras weren’t likely to register their shadows in the dark, provided they followed the convoluted path Sho was leading them on. “Come on, this way,” Sho said. “I can’t do this where I work.”

“What do you mean?”

Slowly they made their way through the darkened library, Sho’s hand holding his, the pair of them laughing like a couple of kids. Which made it all too fitting when Sho produced a ring of keys from his bag and opened a door, pulling Jun inside. “This is the children’s reading room.”

“There’s something immoral about this,” Jun complained as Sho closed the door. He heard Sho drop his bag and the key ring somewhere on the floor.

“Yeah, probably,” Sho admitted, finding Jun’s hand in the dark and tugging on him again. “But this is the only room with the big beanbag chairs.”

Sho roughly yanked him down, and Jun laughed, landing on a squishy beanbag chair that had enough room for Sho and him together. His suit was going to wrinkle, but he didn’t really care once he managed to find Sho’s face, stroking his cheek with his thumb and smiling in the dark.

“Usually this chair can fit about five elementary school kids,” Sho explained.

“Please don’t tell me that.”

“I’m in the information business, I can’t help myself,” Sho teased, fingers finding Jun’s tie, tugging until Jun was nearly lying on top of him. He felt the softest press of Sho’s lips against the corner of his mouth, a lingering promise of better things to come. “You’ll just have to shut me up.”

So he did.

—

A few months later…

—

He woke not to the usual sound of Sho making coffee but instead to the sound of Sho’s voice next to him in bed. He blinked a few times, realizing that Sho wasn’t so much speaking to him as he was reading aloud.

“Kunie gasped as Yamamoto-san pulled her back roughly, sheathing his love sword completely inside her soaking, dripping…”

“Enough!” Jun howled, turning over and narrowing his eyes at the sight of Sho lying on his side, leaning on his elbow and reading from his iPad screen. 

Sho offered him a wink before looking down again. “…sheathing his love sword completely inside her soaking…”

Jun moved quickly, yanking the iPad away and turning with it, gently tossing it onto the pile of clothes they’d left scattered across Jun’s bedroom floor. When he turned back, Sho was waiting for him, leaning forward and having no qualms about kissing Jun and his morning breath.

Jun pulled away first, being more particular about that sort of thing. He got out of bed, knowing that Sho was greedily appreciating the view as he bent down and picked up the iPad.

“I’m keeping this with me,” he threatened, taking it into the bathroom with him so he could wash up, brush his teeth. He made a point of holding it up over his head as he emerged, letting Sho use the bathroom next.

Jun opened his sock drawer, shutting off the iPad and burying it underneath his socks. When Sho emerged, naked and brushing his teeth like he didn’t have a care in the world, Jun was lying comfortably on the mattress, watching.

Sho pointed his toothbrush at him. “Hara-san wants my feedback. You’re very rude to the kind and talented members of my club.”

Jun rolled his eyes, flinging a pillow and hitting Sho in the hip with it. “You told me once before, Sho-san. That I shouldn’t sit through something I hate.”

Sho snorted, turning back to finish his brushing. When he came back, Jun decided they could postpone the coffee. He was wide awake seeing Sho strut around his room without a stitch of clothing on. 

“I’ve got a new chapter from Nino, too. He wants to know what I think about his Usagi-kin love scene. The bunny girl and Yamashiro are finally going to make sweet sweet bunny-human love.”

“Is that all they’re sending you now? Has your innocent and pure writers’ club turned into a gathering of smut peddlers?”

Sho joined him on the bed, moving to sit on top of him, skimming his fingers down Jun’s chest with his usual skill. “I’d still say ninety percent of the content being produced is friendly for a teen and younger audience.”

Jun grinned, shutting his eyes when Sho leaned down to kiss him, tasting like mouthwash as he slipped his tongue past his lips. He wrapped an arm around him, finding comfort and pleasure both as he tickled his fingertips down Sho’s back, hearing Sho’s appreciative moan against his mouth. The kisses grew more heated, the touches more aggressive, until Sho was almost panting, desperate.

“Oh Matsujun,” he murmured, brushing his lips against Jun’s temple. “I need to feel your diamond-hard love sword inside me.”

Jun gave Sho a rather rude push, hearing him laugh and then cry out in panic as Jun knocked him over and off of him, nearly pushing him off of the bed. 

“Call it that again, and you definitely won’t,” Jun complained, getting Sho onto his back. He kissed him quiet once more, one of Sho’s legs wrapping possessively around him. He smiled, laughing each time Sho tried to spit out another disgusting line of Hara-san’s, Jun punishing him in return with tickles, with gentle bites to his shoulder, his bicep.

Soon enough Sho was love-dumb, giddy, reaching a hand up to stroke Jun’s face. “Can I ask you something? It’s not about Hara-san, I swear.”

Jun leaned in to Sho’s touch, knowing that it was a trick and loving it just the same. “Go ahead and ask.”

“What kind of sex noises do you think a bunny girl would make?”

Jun had enough, laughing as he moved over, grabbing a condom and lube from the nightstand. “Let’s leave that sort of detail to the people who can actually write.” He pushed the packet toward Sho’s mouth, let Sho tear it open with his teeth. “The noises you make are better anyway.”

“Maybe I really _should_ do audiobooks,” Sho mused.

Jun swallowed Sho’s desperate, needy moan when he pushed inside him. Jun didn’t like to share. Sho clung to him, breathing heavily in his ear, rocking up against him. “Sho-san, don’t quit your day job.”

Soon after that, words failed them both.


End file.
